another day in the life of someone who doesn’t eat meat

Today is The Boyfriend’s day off. Since it is Tuesday and there is nothing remotely fun to do on Tuesdays, The Boyfriend decided we should go into town and do laundry. As God as my witness I will never live somewhere without onsite laundry again. Unless of course it’s a cardbord box and as I am unemployed currently, that’s a real possibility. But I digress…

He chose a laundrymat by its proximity to a Mexican food place. I love Mexican food, don’t get me wrong. I just loved it a lot more when I ate meat. Too often, especially around here the only options for “meat free” food at these places is a beans and rice burrito, and usually, yep there is meat lard in the beans. My Spanish is about as good as my Russian, as in I can order a margarita pretty well, so when I start asking people at the counter if the beans are vegi they just look at me like I’m a crazy person.

However I thought I was in luck when we went into Tacos De Whatever the Hell It Was Called and saw an actual “Vegitarian” menu! Score I thought and promptly ordered the Vegitarian Fajita burrito.

This is in fact when this became Fear and Loathing in Tacos De Whatever The Hell It Was Called. For one thing, I was pretty sure at this point everyone in line to order started staring at me. It was a lot of big burly dudes that smelled like they did construction, even if they didn’t. And a couple of the girls working the counter looked at me like I had done something bad. I figured I was being paranoid and we went to wait for our order.

Strike One against Tacos De Whatever The Hell It Was Called was that they put my vegies on the grilling thingy at the same time as my boyfriend’s pork order. This may not seem like a big deal to some people but meat has juices. Juices leak. I haven’t had pork, beef or chicken (or any other exotic beast you can come up with) since January. I barely eat fish anymore, aside from the occasional sushi trip. I could actually probably give that up completely as well if I already didn’t have such a hard time finding food in certain situations. So I’m sitting there watching in horror as my vegies are cooking right next to the pork and most likely getting all porky.

I say something to my boyfriend about it and he says it’s probably the veggies for his burrito and not to worry about it. Frustrated I go and refill my soda, thinking if nothing else, I will just live off of Diet Dr Pepper for the rest of my life.

Strike two against Tacos De Whatever The Hell It Was Called was when they wrapped our burritos, they marked one BF which any rational person would deduce to mean Beef Fajita, even though The Boyfriend ordered pork. Whatever. So he goes back inside to get napkins and I unwrapped the blank burrito. It didn’t smell especially meaty so I went and took a bite out of it.

It was not the vegitarian burrito. Not even a little bit. I almost threw up. Instead I spit out the bite in a napkin and handing my boyfriend his damn burrito when he came out. I then opened the other one and opened the tortilla and poked around in it before taking a bite. Everything seemed on the up and up so I ate a little of it, but I could already feel my stomach doing flip flops over the almost bite of pork, so I just stopped.

Plus the beans tasted all meatified and I was just not hungry at that point.

I have no idea why I and other people who choose not to eat meat or certain types of meat are judged. We’re not doing it to antagonize people. At least I’m not. I’m pretty quiet about it for the most part. I’ll even suffer quietly when there isn’t a damn thing at a party I can eat. Or if I’m pretty sure there isn’t going to be anything I can eat, I’ll bring my own, something I’ve talked about here before.

But people are constantly trying to get me to just “try a little” or telling me “It’s just chicken.” Look when you take meat out of your diet it becomes really hard to digest for one thing. So “just chicken” is almost the equivilent of me eating “just rotten eggs” or “just some soap.” It’s even gotten to where fish, which was a staple of my diet at the begining of the year is starting to take its toll on my tummy and I’d just rather skip it all together if there are other options.

I don’t expect people to change their diet or belief system for me, but I’d like it if they respected mine. And that includes the people who are being PAID to prepare my food for me. If you don’t want to “service” people, don’t be in the service industry for fuck’s sake.

On that note I have to go find some Pepto Bismol, my stomach has been doing the Macerena since lunch.